weeklies 9-6-2012

– As you may know (or should know), Amanda Palmer had set up a Kickstarter in the beginning of May for her new studio album, offering up different packages ranging from $25 to $1000 and more. And she had received the support she was aiming for in just a few days. At the end of the full month, she has even breached the $1million mark. This week she has two profiles, one on the Economist and the other on New York Times. Because that’s what a million dollars brings you. Attention.

– Joseph Stiglitz talked about his new book The Price of Inequality on Democracy Now! You can watch the clip here. He also touches upon the news from Tuesday, when Bloomberg News reported that pay for the top CEOs on Wall Street increased by more than 20 percent last year. Meanwhile, census data shows nearly one in two Americans, or 150 million people, have fallen into poverty or could be classified as low-income.

– On a semi-related note; Michael Lewis, an award winning author, gave an interesting commencement speech at Princeton. According to Lewis, success is “always rationalized” because successful people don’t want to acknowledge that they were actually just really lucky. I see his reasoning, that some things are just luck, but you can’t be lucky if you just wait on it either.

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And to finish this week’s roundup, here’s the Star Wars legos a la Escher